Originally posted by buckky
Yogananda was another eastern Guru that came to the west and made a fortune. He appeared to be a good guy though. I read his books and was very inspired his writings. His predictions about a lot of things never came true. His meditation technique was somewhat laborious but effective. Da Free John claims to have gone into Enlightenment at a Temple in California that Yogagnada was connected with. Yogananda is a true Guru Icon. What ever thats worth.
Meditation does not have to be laborious to be effective. For some people, a more complex technique is most helpful; for others, a simpler technique. This does not imply anything about the spiritual maturity or “talent” of the person. There are lots of meditation techniques. Effective means is effective means—relative to the particular person; and that may change with time and circumstance.
For me, the only effort in meditation is the (paradoxical) effort at effortlessness. That is, we are sometimes so habituated to the continual running of the concept-making machinery of the mind that it
seems to take an effort to just—let go. Then we can become aware of the reality that is prior to our conceptualizing (thinking, idea- and image-making) about it, which reality also includes, inseparably, us.
Techniques are really just “helps”—they are not the meditation itself. Meditation is really just a return, so to speak, to a natural state of awareness. That does not mean that thinking/conceptualization is unnatural or unimportant—but one ought to at least be aware of what one is thinking, and not to confuse concept with percept, the thought with the “thing” that it is a thought
about.
One can entertain the (various) metaphysics—but don’t get too hung up on it: that, too, is in the realm of thinking-about. The only descriptive terms I’ll use here are coherence (or harmony, if you prefer), non-separability, mutuality, and wholeness (that one can ultimately speak of a singular whole, the one-without-a-second, the all-without-another). The last is a metaphysical/philosophical conclusion based, in part, on the experience and self-evidence of the others.
Well, all that’s pretty “clinical”. I prefer more “poetic” statements:
Maya
is Brahman.
However you play it,
you can’t escape it—
only see it,
then say as you will:
the saying too is playing,
playing with Maya
in the expansive
Om.
Where else could you possibly go?
Where are the borders of All?
Where else is the Whole
but here?
Where else is here
but wherever you are?
Be all
here now.
Maya playing with Maya,
clear and aware:
tat tvam asi.
09 May '08 10:18
Hinduism R0XX0RZ
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